Animal Farm Quotes

When it was all over, the remaining animals, except for the pigs and dogs, crept away in a body. They were shaken and miserable. They did not know which was more shocking – the treachery of the animals who had leagued themselves with Snowball, or the cruel retribution they had just witnessed…Since Jones had left the farm, until today, no animal had killed another animal. Not even a rat had been killed.

– George Orwell

Animal Farm. Chapter 7. The animals are horrified at this turn of events, of animals being killed by animals in Napoleon’s wave of terror.

Some of the animals remembered – or thought they remembered – that the Sixth Commandment decreed “No animal shall kill any other animal.” And though no one cared to mention it in the hearing of the pigs or the dogs, it was felt that the killings which had taken place did not square with this.

– George Orwell

Animal Farm. Chapter 8. The animals did not publicly comment on the killings – Napoleon’s dogs were on the prowl to ensure that – but they were not in wholehearted agreement with them.

Napoleon was now never spoken of simply as ‘Napoleon’. He was always referred to in formal style as ‘our Leader, Comrade Napoleon’, and the pigs liked to invent for him such titles as Father of All Animals, Terror of Mankind, Protector of the Sheep-fold, Ducklings’ Friend, and the like. In his speeches, Squealer would talk with the tears rolling down his cheeks of Napoleon’s wisdom, the goodness of his heart, and the deep love he bore to all animals everywhere, even and especially the unhappy animals who still lived in ignorance and slavery on other farms.

– George Orwell

Animal Farm. Chapter 8. Napoleon is intoxicated on his own power. He is given all kinds of names to make him sound good, inflate his ego, make him God-like. Which Soviet dictator is he beginning to remind you of?

It had become usual to give Napoleon the credit for every successful achievement and every stroke of good fortune. You would often hear one hen remark to another, “Under the guidance of our Leader, Comrade Napoleon, I have laid five eggs in six days”; or two cows, enjoying a drink at the pool, would exclaim, “Thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon, how excellent this water tastes!”

– George Orwell

Animal Farm. Chapter 8. It is Joseph Stalin who is being satirised here, as that’s who Napoleon represents.

At the foot of the end wall of the big barn, where the Seven Commandments were written, there lay a ladder broken in two pieces. Squealer, temporarily stunned, was sprawling beside it, and near at hand there lay a lantern, a paint-brush, and an overturned pot of white paint. The dogs immediately made a ring round Squealer, and escorted him back to the farmhouse as soon as he was able to walk. None of the animals could form any idea as to what this meant, except old Benjamin, who nodded his muzzle with a knowing air, and seemed to understand, but would say nothing.

– George Orwell

Animal Farm. Chapter 8. It is clear from this episode that Squealer has been changing the Seven Commandments. Evidence of the corruption in Napoleon’s and his second-in-command Squealer’s leadership. Benjamin, the long-lived donkey, is the only one who has figured this out.

Reading out the figures in a shrill, rapid voice, he proved to them in detail that they had more oats, more hay, more turnips than they had had in Jones’s day, that they worked shorter hours, that their drinking water was of better quality, that they lived longer, that a larger proportion of their young ones survived infancy, and that they had more straw in their stalls and suffered less from fleas.

– George Orwell

Animal Farm. Chapter 9. Squealer explains the “readjustment” of rations. Rations have been reduced again, except for the pigs and dogs.

“Up there, comrades,” he would say solemnly, pointing to the sky with his large beak – “up there, just on the other side of that dark cloud that you can see – there it lies, Sugarcandy Mountain, that happy country where we poor animals shall rest for ever from our labours!” He even claimed to have been there on one of his higher flights, and to have seen the everlasting fields of clover and the linseed cake and lump sugar growing on the hedges. Many of the animals believed him.

– George Orwell

Animal Farm. Chapter 9. Moses the raven on the mythical animal paradise. While many were believers, the pigs declared the raven’s stories were lies.

And at the end, almost too weak to speak, he whispered in my ear that his sole sorrow was to have passed on before the windmill was finished. ‘Forward, comrades!’ he whispered. ‘Forward in the name of the Rebellion. Long live Animal Farm! Long live Comrade Napoleon! Napoleon is always right.’ Those were his very last words, comrades.

– George Orwell

Animal Farm. Chapter 9. Squealer tells the others that Boxer died peacefully in hospital, praising the glories of Animal Farm, and he at the great horse’s side. But in truth Boxer collapsed pulling stone for the windmill. His body was taken to a glue factory for slaughter in a factory van, as witnessed by Benjamin.

After that it did not seem strange when next day the pigs who were supervising the work of the farm all carried whips in their trotters. It did not seem strange to learn that the pigs had bought themselves a wireless set, were arranging to install a telephone, and had taken out subscriptions to ‘John Bull’, ‘Tit-Bits’, and the ‘Daily Mirror’. It did not seem strange when Napoleon was seen strolling in the farmhouse garden with a pipe in his mouth – no, not even when the pigs took Mr. Jones’s clothes out of the wardrobes and put them on.

– George Orwell

Animal Farm. Chapter 10. The pigs begin carrying whips and wearing Jones’s clothes.
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